The proposed legislation is nearly identical to HR5075, introduced by Greg Steube (R-FL) in the House of Representatives on August 29, 2025, also as the GRACE Act. It, too, requires public schools to grant religious exemptions to families that request them.

Under the Act, K-12 schools that refuse to grant vaccine exemptions for students on the basis of their religion will not receive educational funding from the government.

Moreover, the Act stipulates that schools would be barred from requiring students to provide documentation to prove the sincerity of their religious beliefs – and would be free to wear religious clothing, pray, or opt out from lessons should they feel they conflict with their religion.

The Senate and House, currently on hiatus, are expected to vote on the proposed legislation in the fall.

More than 50 organizations nationwide have already endorsed the bills – and the MAHA movement has, too, for it aligns neatly with a principle fundamental to MAHA: that neither the government nor schools should make medical and health decisions for children. Their parents should.

The Trump administration has also signaled its support for religious liberties in a recent executive order, which calls to ‘maximize’ parental choice over childhood vaccines, and specifically instructs federal agencies to ensure states are compliant with “their obligations to provide religious and medical exemptions from childhood and adolescent immunization requirements.”

While only four states – New York, California, Connecticut and Maine – do not allow religious (or philosophical) exemptions to school vaccine mandates, it’s an issue that has long deserved to be tackled at the federal level. America needs federally mandated religious protections against precisely the kind of vaccine mandates foisted on the country during the Covid pandemic.

Just one month before lockdowns, advocates for religious liberty had been lobbying for constitutional protections for American parents. A letter to President Donald Trump, dated February 3, 2020, commissioned by Freedom of Religion-United Solutions (FOR-US) and presented by the International Religious Freedom Roundtable, garnered over 39,000 signatures. The letter called attention to the campaign to pressure state legislatures to repeal laws allowing religious or philosophical exemptions to vaccination.

The CDC, FDA and state agencies, it said, lacked the science to support their recommended vaccination schedules and were essentially using “police power” to force these vaccines on children.

“The religious exemption repeal bills which have already passed, and those pending in 2020, demonstrate that state governments around the United States are committing a flagrant violation of U.S. citizens’ right to freedom of religion,” the letter read. “Informed consent cannot be present where there is state coercion.”

Many religions have some theological basis for refusing vaccinations, and the concern predates the controversial mRNA vaccines. Shannon Kroner, executive director of Freedom of Religion–United Solutions (FOR-US), has been uniting diverse faith traditions behind religious freedom for vaccine choice since 2019, including Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and others.

“It is clear that Americans want their religious freedoms honored and protected,” Kroner told The MAHA Report earlier this month “Our sincerely held convictions must be respected, and no family should be forced to choose between their faith and their child’s education or participation in school.”

Kroner and FOR-US support the GRACE Act, saying it reaffirms that the government “must not compel citizens to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

For a large swath of people of faith, the issue of vaccines is tied to Biblical teaching about caring for children and avoiding injury. In a recent interview with Kroner that can be watched on Rumble, Rabbi Pinchas Yehuda Levin referenced the teaching of Orthodox Jewish scholars:

“Many great Torah scholars said, by definition, every vaccine is a biblical sin, because the vaccine violates God’s commandment that we guard our health,” Levin said. “It’s very explicit. You just take out the insert to the vaccine, you’ll see a vaccine is dangerous to our health and that’s why there is [a] religious exemption. We cannot be forced to take something that is detrimental to our health.”

The issues of informed consent and religious freedom have never been more important, and the Covid-19 ordeal demonstrates why. MRNA vaccines were never safe or effective for healthy young children. This reality was always clear, yet the medical establishment obfuscated and outright lied about it.

“Religious liberty is not a partisan issue,” Kroner said. “It is a foundational American right that protects people of every faith and of no faith at all. When we defend the right of families to live according to their sincerely held beliefs, we strengthen the fabric of our entire nation.”

Share

(Originally published at the MAHA Report.)

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Partisan divisions in Connecticut have sparked controversy over a new law that offers public schools a curriculum focused on Islamic and Arab studies. Proponents say the initiative rounds out multicultural education and does not conflict with the separation of church and state. Opponents object that the law will favor a particular theological perspective.

The New Connecticut Law

The outcome of Connecticut’s disputed perspectives will likely depend on how it is implemented. Advocates claim that Arab and Islamic studies are not mandatory, but that would not cure a constitutional defect in educational materials. They also claim the intention and impact will be cultural, including Arabic language teaching. Yet “Islamic” studies do not refer to a culture but to a specific Abrahamic faith. As Democrat lawmaker and co-chair of the Education Committee Jennifer Leeper observed: “Adding another religion helps our children understand the world around them, their classmates, and their neighbors, which is critical for preparing our students to succeed in the most diverse country on earth….”

If Connecticut schools offered courses on comparative religion, the First Amendment would not be transgressed. Confusion surrounds the new statute’s implementation because left-leaning lawmakers have been vague and even conflicting in their representations about the law. Are Islamic religious studies to be offered, while the Ten Commandments or Christian theology are prohibited?

In pursuit of the social justice ideology of multiculturalism, American culture is being denigrated, and Christianity is vilified. Slavery is laid at the feet of Christianity, while the Abolitionists who ended slavery (and secured the vote for women – not a big priority for Sharia Law) are ignored. America’s heritage has been unfairly tarnished by dubious if not blatantly false public-school teachings about patriarchy, never-proven systemic racism, and a plethora of similar slurs. The Democrats who invoke the tradition of America being “the most diverse nation on earth” are often the voices that decry the nation as colonizing, oppressive, intolerant, and misogynistic. How will they present Islam?

Cultural Marxism and the Indoctrination of Schoolchildren

The cultural Marxism that has saturated American universities and public schools for decades has been dismissed as conservative paranoia. That gaslighting is dimming down now that the Democratic Socialists of America are coming out in full force. Hating America is a trend, often fueled by far-left public school teachers.

Teaching children that they can switch genders at will (and hiding this indoctrination from parents) is designed to destroy young minds and separate children from their families and communities, as James Lindsay explains in his book “The Marxification of Education.” Dividing Americans into artificial, tribalized, “marginalized” groups is destroying the melting pot, as is opening borders to criminal gangs and America-hating cultures here to steal, defraud, and divide with no interest in assimilation.

Under such circumstances, conservative Christian distrust of the motives for the new law and its implementation is certainly understandable. Few sociological groups are less likely to assimilate into the US than Muslims, any more than they seek to assimilate into European societies.

Will this be taught to Connecticut students, that Judaism and Christianity embrace separation of church and state, but that Islam embraces theocracy only, and strives in every society to implement a one-world compelled religion? This is basic theology, yet it is the precise opposite of what many uneducated leftists preach.

Gaslighting the Melting Pot

Predictably, Connecticut’s social justice bureaucrats express bewilderment that anyone would question the new law. Senator Gary Winfield, vice chair of the Education Committee, expressed typical clueless arrogance toward the bill’s detractors, stating:

“I just don’t know how folks see this as different (from) us saying you know we will have a curriculum for Jewish history,” he said. “We will have a curriculum for African American history. I’m just baffled by that. I want young folks to be educated about the world. That includes the impact that Christianity has had on this country, the impact that Judaism has had on this country and the impact that Islam has had on this country. Education is not indoctrination. The lack of education is indoctrination.”

That’s quite a twist, but such gaslighting is passe. A similarly perverse logic is used to “protect” children from ignorant parents by “educating” (never indoctrinating!) them that abortion is a human right that harms no one, that all white people are oppressors, that anyone who questions the morality of homosexuality is homophobic (even Muslims?), etc., etc., ad nauseam.

When Senator Winfield refers to “the impact that Islam has had on this country,” does he mean “marginalized” Muslims, who he will now say (like black slaves) “built the nation,” or is he referring to the Somali fraudsters who are ransacking it today? Maybe he is alluding to the extremist attacks of 911? Is he suggesting the Constitution, clearly constructed on the foundations of Judeo-Christian values, incorporated Islamic ideals? What nouveau history is he contemplating as he expresses mystification that anyone would question the motives here? “Folks” are catching on to this endless mind game. As Lindsay points out, the word “folks” is a Marxist dog whistle and an effort to appear earthy while on the indoctrination prowl.

Winfield’s feigned ignorance of why parents increasingly distrust public schools is capped off by his laughable effort to pervert language itself in his gaslighting remark that “the lack of education is indoctrination.” Perhaps he didn’t learn in school that the word indoctrination means the precise opposite: “the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.”

Time will tell how Connecticut schools implement the new law and, thus, how it fares in any potential court challenges. Teaching Arab culture and history is a very different educational animal than teaching Islamic theology, but the statute’s drafters have conflated the two. Perhaps that was by design.

Share

Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

Anthony Fauci — (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

As President Joe Biden left office, he pardoned Anthony Fauci for any federal offenses he may have committed between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025, arising from his work as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and other organizations. More recently, the famous doctor refused to answer a single question posed by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which is investigating federal agencies and their COVID-19 responses. He is now being referred to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for a possible criminal investigation into contempt of Congress for that refusal.

The Fauci Fiasco

The disease COVID-19 has largely faded from the public’s consciousness as mortality rates have dropped to nearly zero. However, the trauma (and drama) of the global pandemic has resurfaced with greater virulence than ever. At stake is much more than Anthony Fauci’s fate. Public trust in federal institutions, so-called “real science,” and even fellow citizens are all at stake in this unfolding transparency about who knew what, and when.

America trusted Anthony Fauci as the face of a global response to what they were told was a deadly pandemic created by filthy diners in a wet market in China. This dubious narrative never seemed to align with common sense and even alleged that those questioning whether the bioweapons laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the source of the outbreak were racists. There was a pandemic pattern of everything being upside down. But recent events in the Fauci matter have ostensibly shattered the narrative peddled to the nation.

Normally, a referral by a congressional committee for a contempt of Congress violation would be voted on by the Senate and require 60 votes. Republicans likely cannot garner that consensus – the vote to hold Fauci in contempt fell along party lines. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-KY) has thus referred the matter directly to the DOJ for evaluation.

A Circus Hearing?

The doctor’s hijinks have been quite outrageous. At the hearing, where he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination 111 times, Fauci opened with a prepared statement, which he sought to interpose in lieu of answering questions. He portrayed himself as the victim of a personal witch hunt by Sen. Paul, apparently oblivious that millions of Americans want answers and accountability.

But this tactic blew up in Fauci’s face. The Senate resolution referring him for possible federal prosecution specifically recites that “Chairman Paul further found Dr. Fauci waived his right to claim the privilege as a result of his opening testimony on subject matter pertinent to the questions under inquiry.” This adds yet another layer of legal complexity to an already confusing and fast-moving controversy.

Allegations that Fauci suspected COVID was concocted in a Wuhan lab and that he conspired to tell the public the opposite (to protect revelations about gain-of-function research and his complicity therein since 2014, the beginning date for his pardon) are extremely serious. Equally as severe are the claims that he knowingly amplified the mortality rate of the disease by a factor of five and did not inform Americans that only the elderly were at significant risk. It also appears he deliberately conspired to hide these truths and the public records that reveal them.

The Legal Strategy for Contempt

The Senate Committee voted down an effort to offer Fauci complete immunity in exchange for forthright testimony. This may have avoided an opportunity to platform Fauci invoking the Fifth again, which he likely would have done. Such a scenario may have further strengthened grounds for a contempt prosecution. Instead, the matter has been expeditiously referred to the DOJ.

The Biden pardons are federal and cannot shield Fauci from the several Republican-led states already investigating him independently. Nor can it protect him from perjury charges if he lies to the Committee after the January 19, 2025, pardon cut-off.

However, Fauci jeopardized his own protection when he defiantly ranted in a prepared statement to Paul’s Committee and then refused to say what color the carpet in the hearing room was. Fauci sought to have his cake and eat it, too, and that may be his undoing.

The Noose Tightens

The DOJ could decide that Fauci was entitled to invoke the Fifth Amendment’s protections because of possible state proceedings. Had he not postured with his opening salvo, he would likely have had a strong legal stance. But Rand Paul and the Senate Committee anticipated Fauci would play circus with their hearings and try this ploy. There is strong precedent for this position, and if it holds, it destroys his invocation of state claims as justification for silence.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his staff just released copies of Dr. Fauci’s phone records. Millions more documents related to this dispute have been promised. Fauci is in deep, and Democrats who seek to dismiss his alleged perfidy with claims of partisan retaliation risk pinning their own names to his actions in a volatile midterm season.

If Fauci wanted immunity, he should have just kept his mouth closed. By trying to use the committee hearing as a platform to vindicate himself and attack Rand Paul, Fauci stuck his neck into a potential noose that is tightening by the day.

Share

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

(Photo by Anthony Souffle/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)

The White House has prioritized budget-cutting and rooting out waste since the earliest days of Trump 2.0. Some people have alleged that elected Democrats are associated with rampant fraud in numerous federal agencies, often connected to illegal immigrants. As the midterm election season looms in America’s fractious political climate, some Democratic candidates may encounter a credibility problem selling socialist economic solutions to working-class voters.

Far-Left Cliff

America’s far left embraces policies such as defunding the police, decarceration, open borders, and boundless “free” programs that cost citizens in both cash and chaos. Yet even those who oppose basic voter ID requirements as oppressive seemingly go mum when widespread fraud schemes are exposed in Minneapolis childcare and autism programs, in California and New York hospice services, and in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The Trump White House recently unveiled a new tracking dashboard to display the funds diverted by fraud and the progress in reclaiming money where possible. Stopping waste tends to appeal to both blue and red wallets, especially when corporate media parrots establishment Democrats’ cacophony of the “affordability crisis.” It is not just that it’s harder to target wealthy entrepreneurs when government is visibly corrupt; abuse of social programs may undermine public empathy for the very groups those initiatives are supposed to serve.

Howls of indignation followed the comprehensive examination of public coffers under DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Expensive elitist EV cars necessary to avert the imminent end of the world were lit on fire, keyed, and defecated upon in fury over the supposed end of benefits to starving African AIDS sufferers (the administration of those benefits was shifted to the Department of State). It is harder for people to grind their teeth or spray paint Tesla dealerships over nonexistent daycares and medical clinics.

A Midterm Economic Reckoning

The midterms may compel Democratic candidates to publicly commit to policies beyond rhetoric, which might be stony ground for a paper-thin ideology. This profound weakness in viable economic policy could be exacerbated by strident socialist voices and recent progressive initiatives that ostensibly undermine affordability and the working class, as well as immigration policies that threaten domestic jobs and wages while increasing rent and housing costs. On top of this train wreck of economic offerings, one may add (with zealous assistance from conservative campaign voices) the drumbeat of fraud upon fraud under Democratic stewardship.

The new government fraud dashboard, Fraud.gov, offers the soon-to-vote public a running tally of money stolen and recovered, inviting taxpayers not only to reflect on what those diverted funds could have done to offset the federal deficit, but on how much they could have provided in relief to the intended recipients.

As the midterms approach, American voters are being asked to choose between suicidal empathy for illegal immigrants and community concern for their neighbors. The USDA reports nearly $7 million in fraud, including in the SNAP program – money that should have been spent to help low-income Americans. Funds diverted in the name of hospice and elderly care, immigrant childcare, or autism services might have ended up stuffed in Somalia-bound suitcases, depriving those in genuine need.

Dems Can’t Afford Fraud on the Ballot

How will the party that claims it will rescue the middle class from oppressive billionaires and oligarch bogeymen offer a credible message of economic salvation when the institutions it proposes to employ with mandated wealth redistribution are so abjectly inequitable? Rent controls could drive up rents and reduce housing inventories; mandatory wage increases might inflate food costs and eliminate jobs. Allowing shoplifters to run free may risk a spike in retail inflation for those who pay. But even those socialist programs pale compared to plain old criminality.

The Democratic Party has allied itself with the Democratic Socialists of America and other extremist economic voices who decry capitalism and promise free groceries and free rent. Most working-class voters, who once formed the backbone of the Democratic Party and whose support is desperately needed, are not easily beguiled by such sweetly singing socialist sirens. Their ears may be even more finely attuned to the offensive tales of wholesale fraud now being tallied daily at the White House.

On the midterm campaign trails, expect to hear the usual bickering over what sparked food and other inflation: Bidenomics, COVID profligacy, Trump’s tariffs, and more. Regardless of who voters think is at fault for rising prices, they seem to seek leadership rather than blame. The opinion pendulum would normally swing away from the incumbent Republican Party in times of economic unease, likely compounded if tensions persist in the Persian Gulf. Yet the pendulum then faces a stalled backswing – the Democratic alternative splinters between fiscal responsibility (a traditional Democratic value) and its communist anathema. Accusations of fraud on the blue party’s watch do not instill confidence in either.

Shocking revelations of rampant fraud could be a political death knell if pinned to the Democratic Party. Such stories link directly to crime, immigration, the economy, and affordability – issues that some Democrats have teed up for the GOP, in perfect view of the November voting season. Eliminating fraud is a strong bipartisan win, and Republicans need only share the facts.

Share

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

A recent video made with Artificial Intelligence (AI) satirizing Vermont Congresswoman Becca Balint has sparked indignant hostility from the self-styled “Scrappy Little Dyke.” Vermont’s rabidly left-wing Attorney General Charity Clark applied a sketchy new Vermont law to investigate the video’s creator, prompting a federal lawsuit. Charity and Becca both care far more about the free speech of criminals and immigrants than they do the political expressions of Vermonters. Ironically, that’s the video’s core message!

AI Video Condemns Socialist Thievery

The offending video portrays Balint as a scowling carpetbagger, insensitive to Vermont’s farmers and working class. Presaging anti-socialist themes likely to dominate conservative messaging through the nation’s midterms, the AI simulation of an arrogant, beret-sporting Balint mocks the Marxist playbook of elitists feigning social angst while milking the middle class. Standing before the Vermont statehouse, AI Balint declares, “Vermont is my state. I decide what’s going to happen. Your tax money is spent, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop me.”

Onto the scene comes Vermont logger and would-be Balint challenger Mark Coester, depicted in his AI incarnation operating a large yellow backhoe that scoops up an arm-flailing Balint and deposits her in a dumpster. Says Coester, “Vermont is for Americans, not radical communists!”

Comrade Balint was none too pleased, promptly complaining about the parody:

“This ad is offensive and a dangerous example of what happens when AI is used to deceive voters…. Fabricating my voice and image to put words in my mouth is a new low. Free speech is a cornerstone of our democracy, but impersonation and deception are not.”

Impersonation is the cornerstone of political satire, which has long lampooned the decadence, fraud, and waste of the ruling classes. Going back to the Greeks (Aristophanes) and Romans (Juvenal) and inspiring amusing luminaries such as Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, and America’s beloved Mark Twain, satire has positively influenced culture, politics, and social policy for thousands of years. Will Ferrell has many times mimicked George Bush’s voice and image and “put words in his mouth” – no one is any more deceived that Mark Coester actually tipped Balint into a bin than they were that Ferrell was actually Bush when he roasted POTUS George W.

Democrats Pervert Free Speech

As a sworn member of Congress, Becca Balint has undertaken to respect and uphold the laws of the land. Instead, she is abusing her office in derogation of long-protected speech rights. Fortunately, the US Supreme Court has firmly established protective boundaries for political speech under the First Amendment.

As Justice Kennedy opined in Citizens United v FEC:

“The First Amendment underwrites the freedom to experiment and to create in the realm of thought and speech. Citizens must be free to use new forms, and new forums, for the expression of ideas. The civic discourse belongs to the people, and the Government may not prescribe the means used to conduct it.”

Justice Kennedy recalled the example of a new technology used for political satire in 1939, when the classic political comedy Mr. Smith Goes to Washington premiered. Most of the US Senate and nearly half of the House attended the gala showing. Many congresspeople, much like Becca Balint today, were unamused. Time reported, in 1939:

“Next day there was a great rubbing of sore heads on Capitol Hill. Senators charged the picture lowered the Senate’s dignity. Three Senators (who declined to be quoted) upheld Senatorial dignity with these pungent comments on the film: “Not all Senators are [SOBs].” “Punk!” “It stinks!”

….Said Senator Norris: “. . . . The movies had a chance to do a good job, but they have given the public only a false, absurd impression.”

That is Becca Balint’s anti-AI argument now – that the public will be deceived by satire that she deems diminishes her Scrappy Little Dignity. But Becca has not been very straight with the public. She has called for free speech for foreigners or criminals, while opposing it for Vermont voters.

Balint’s Misinformation Pattern

Becca Balint co-sponsored a bill called the Land of the Free Act to “repeal Trump power targeting free speech,” which would protect the so-called “right” of foreigners visiting the US on green cards to condemn the country and foment treason. The immigration laws restricting hostile speech by green card holders precedes the Trump administration. It has been correctly applied to review the immigration status of green card holders spewing anti-Semitic rhetoric and radical calls for violence on US campuses (aka “hate speech”). Those who hate the Land of the Free do not possess the right to seek its destruction, yet Becca Balint ignores the roots of the law while misinforming Americans that it is some sort of Trump attack on their liberties. She defends non-citizen America-haters “who are exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech.” No, they aren’t – that right is subject to a longstanding immigration law that legally restricts their hate America speech. Honesty is not Becca Balint’s strong suit.

Similarly, Balint has been denouncing Donald Trump for investigations of New York Times reporters who disclosed to the world that the President’s new plane is less secure than the previous Air Force One. Balint portrays this as an attack on the free press, which she says should report on wasted tax dollars. But she deliberately avoids mentioning that the federal investigation stems from an illegal leak of top-secret military content that put a sitting US POTUS at risk of assassination. Balint deceives voters about the law and context of the federal investigation, deliberately misinforming the public (no AI required!).

Wait – isn’t “deception” exactly what Balint is condemning the AI video for doing, when in fact it deceived no one and well captured many Vermonters’ growing sense that Becca and her scrappy progressive ilk are bilking Vermonters into poverty on the crocodile tears of helping the poor? The video condemns classic socialist thievery, and Becca doesn’t like it being called out while she blames Vermont’s “affordability crisis” on Donald Trump.

Vermont’s AG Charity Clark never met a lawsuit against the Trump administration she didn’t like, and blocks federal authorities to assist illegals and criminals at the expense of Vermonters’ safety. Clark quickly launched a so-called investigation into the Balint video’s creator, a US veteran named Hank Poitras, implying he could be criminally charged for issuing the AI pastiche in violation of a new Vermont anti-AI statute. However, the statute by its terms only applies where content “appears to a reasonable person to be a realistic representation of” a political candidate, and specifically excludes “synthetic media constituting satire or parody.”

A Scrappy Little Indictment?

No one with half a logical brain can reasonably believe the subject video actually depicts Balint, let alone that it is not satire. Poitras has sued the state of Vermont for this blatant left-wing infringement on conservative Vermonters’ rights of political speech. The very fact that Clark investigated this video is an indictment of the statute’s vagueness and facial unconstitutionality. Vermont authorities must not be allowed to chill political voices, most especially satirical attempts to expose the fraud and lies being spewed by progressive socialists like Becca Balint.

It is difficult to discern a difference in public welfare between Rich Little’s iconic impersonation of Richard Nixon, or Tina Fey’s not-very-flattering portrayal of Sarah Palin, and an AI version of those same comedy sketches. The whole point of satire from time in memoriam has been to inflate or exaggerate the behavior or policies of rulers or government officials to critique or call for reform. Jonathan Swift was not literally calling for people to dine on infant stew in A Modest Proposal: an AI version of that perverse essay would be no different.

Becca Balint and Charity Clark have hypocritically indicted themselves. Hank Poitras will win his challenge, preserving the political liberties that Americans have long enjoyed despite persistent Democratic efforts to punish “misinformation” while spewing it endlessly themselves.

Share

(Originally published at the Vermont Daily Chronicle and American Thinker.)

The benefits of chiropractic care have long been established. The mission of the Chiropractic Hub is not limited to what is stated on its website. Case in point – the inspiring story of Drs. Lona Cook and Amanda Blonigen.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe

Dr. Lona Cook began her journey in chiropractic services in northwestern Wisconsin in 2010, where she founded Cook Chiropractic Center in Chippewa Falls. The facility blossomed, challenging Dr. Cook to expand her team and capacity to serve the community’s demand for chiropractic services.

After attending a conference that challenged her to reach more of her community, Lona was inspired to extend health-enhancing chiropractic care to more families by making it more convenient to access.

In 2016, Cook Chiropractic developed a relationship with the Chippewa Falls Area School District. This began with on-site staff care but quickly evolved into providing optional, parent-approved chiropractic care for students while at school. The program grew quickly and proved the concept that many people were interested in the care and benefits if access was made easier. Dr. Amanda Blonigen joined Dr. Cook and the mission expanded.

Anecdotally, staff reported not only feeling better and more relaxed in the classroom, but they also saw the same improvements in many of their students. Some children were less disruptive and more attentive. Given these positive changes, the program expanded. For several years, the team added locations and chiropractors. As the team grew and more children had access to chiropractic care, Dr. Amanda and Dr. Cook saw an opportunity to share their findings about the benefits of chiropractic to school-aged kids. They reached out to two prominent chiropractic research teams – Life University and Haavik Research – and began a collaboration to design a program that would measure outcomes beyond anecdotal reports from parents, teachers, and children.

Later, they helped form Well Adjusted Students, Inc., a nonprofit, to expand access and research. In 2025, the teams collaborated to publish their first retrospective study, and also do a small EEG trial looking at how chiropractic care influences the central nervous system. While more research is needed in this field, initial results are hopeful.

Studying Chiropractic Care in Schools

The resulting study, published in June 2025, surveyed what Dr. Cook and her team had observed. Titled “Retrospective review of case records of school-aged children receiving chiropractic care” and published in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, the study analyzed 180 records of children ages 5-18 spanning a 12-week period of care; it included questionnaires for participants as well as neurophysiological exams. Results indicated that many children experienced significant improvements in physical health and well-being, especially those with hyperactivity. In other words, the results are extremely promising, leading the authors to call for further study of the potential benefits of chiropractic care in pediatric hospitals and on-site school environments.

The study did not find statistically significant improvements in spine thermography, heart rate variability, or school functioning scores in this initial data. However, other metrics indicated that the chiropractic services that the school-based chiropractic team provided school children resulted in meaningful health improvements.

Researchers found statistically significant improvements in children’s self-reported quality of life, with total PedsQL™ scores rising and the largest gains showing up in the “health and activities” subdomain. Children also showed a small but statistically important reduction in hyperactivity symptoms.

The study’s authors note these are small-to-modest effect sizes and, because this was a retrospective case series without a control group or randomization, the findings can’t establish that chiropractic care caused the improvements — the authors call for a future randomized controlled trial to test that question directly.

Currently, the research team is also looking at data on how children receiving chiropractic may also positively affect the student’s attendance and minimize Office Discipline Referrals (ODRs), which would be impactful in helping schools.

The school-based chiropractic study is not a brash effort to hype the profession: it is a sober, scientifically conservative assessment that the authors hope will inspire more comprehensive research on the benefits of chiropractic in schools.

“This retrospective review of case records from children attending an onsite school chiropractic clinic has demonstrated some changes in health-related quality of life following a period of 12 weeks of chiropractic care,” the study concludes. “Further research using a clinical trial design is needed to extrapolate the findings and to assess causation.”

Looking Ahead

Many new frontiers in preventive and non-traditional healthcare have emerged in tandem with the growing national awareness of the chronic disease scourge plaguing the nation’s children. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has led a bipartisan, grassroots charge to understand and counter this health crisis. Chiropractic care and other holistic therapies have a seat at the table to discern care options for healing and well-being – to work alongside separate initiatives to improve children’s diets, food choices, and the quality and amount of exercise they do.

Dr. Cook, Dr. Blonigen and many committed chiropractors like them are making a difference in the lives of Americans and their children.

The vision of the Cook Chiropractic Center is to meet children and families where they are, promote nervous system health, reduce stress, and improve their day-to-day quality of life. The short-term goal is “to demonstrate the benefits of having chiropractic care on-site for employers, employees, teachers, and students.”

Dr. Cook is excited about the work her team has accomplished: “We’re encouraged by the growing recognition — among parents, educators, policymakers, and others in our communities — that our children need more options that build real resiliency and adaptability,” she said. “MAHA, and the voices it’s bringing forward, are helping these ideas gain traction. A healthier neuro-spinal system, at any age, gives a person a stronger base to grow from and engage more fully in life. Our goal is simple: get more natural chiropractic care in front of more families, schools, and individuals, so it becomes not an alternative, but a main tenet of healthy living.”

The MAHA movement’s goals align with the school-based system that the non-profit, Well Adjusted Students, Inc., supports. Like them, we want students to lead happier, healthier lives and have improved learning opportunities through the demonstrated benefits of chiropractic services.

This is hardly a radical vision. America’s children desperately need all the help they can get. More research is required to better assess and measure outcomes of chiropractic care in the pediatric context.

Meanwhile, Well Adjusted Students, Inc. has expanded to sixteen schools, including multiple districts. It is also assisting other regions while attracting international interest as well. As the MAHA movement continues to spread, its embrace of chiropractic care and other preventative, integrative approaches offers rich hope to our nation’s most precious assets – our children.

Additional Resources:

Well Adjusted Students, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that expands school-based chiropractic care and funds the research needed to measure its effects. Chiropractors interested in serving students in schools, and districts curious about the model, can learn more at welladjustedstudents.org.

(Originally published at The MAHA Report.)

(Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)

Democrats’ knee-jerk opposition to President Donald Trump’s initiatives apparently even extends to the most sensible policies, including efforts to ensure that US elections are honest and transparent. Frustrated by congressional dithering over passage of the SAVE America Act, Trump issued an executive order that directed federal agencies to create a database of eligible voters to be provided to the states and correlated with mail-in ballots tracked by USPS, the United States Postal Service. At least three federal suits have been filed seeking to block the plan on various grounds, and the Trump administration has called on the US Supreme Court to settle the matter posthaste.

Midterms – and Chaos – Loom

With midterm elections fewer than 100 days away, the urgency to resolve this dispute is apparent, compounding the legal maneuvering. Both sides argue the courts must rule in their favor to avoid irreparable harm. Those supporting the administration assert that blocking the USPS from ballot tracking would heighten the potential for election fraud and weaken voter trust in the electoral system. The various plaintiffs argue that implementing the executive order would undermine elections, disenfranchise voters, and subject state officials to potential criminal sanctions. Some of the latter claims rest on speculative assertions that the Trump administration would violate the law after the order was executed.

Those who thought the courts had already resolved this issue in President Trump’s favor may be forgiven for their confusion: Several high-profile suits have been filed; two have failed in federal appellate court. The suits also involve different plaintiffs and causes of action.

The NAACP sued the USPS in federal district court in Washington, DC, alleging the USPS proposal to track election mail violated a December 2021 settlement agreement. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Bill Clinton appointee, sided with the NAACP, but a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overruled him on July 17. The panel found that the USPS was likely to prevail in the case and had demonstrated it would suffer irreparable harm if Judge Sullivan’s stay were allowed, noting in their opinion that there “can be no do over” post-midterms.

Another suit was filed by various Democratic entities, accusing the Trump administration of prospective harms, which were entirely conjectural. This suit fared even worse than the NAACP filing: The district court refused to issue an injunction blocking the administration’s efforts to safeguard federal elections. A three-judge DC Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that view on July 28.

USPS in the Crosshairs

Then there’s a prominent suit filed by 23 states and the District of Columbia, which is the subject of the Trump administration’s outreach to the US Supreme Court on July 27. This case commenced in Massachusetts, where US District Judge Indira Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee, accepted the states’ argument on June 25 that the Constitution gives them the power to determine voter eligibility and to set the “Times, Places, and Manner” of congressional elections. The Trump administration filed a motion to intervene in that case, which a divided panel of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied on July 25.

The nation is now in uncharted legal waters, with potentially dramatic effects not seen since Americans learned about “dangling chads” in the controversial 2000 election. If the Supreme Court declines to hear the Trump administration’s filing to void Talwani’s stay, President Trump’s USPS executive order will remain in effect in all but the 24 plaintiff jurisdictions. It is unclear whether the USPS could implement the planned ballot tracking in the remaining jurisdictions. But if it did so, the nation would witness a midterm patchwork in which red states could enforce election-integrity efforts, while progressive states could defiantly allow illegals to vote in elections, or at least present that risk due to a lack of accountability.

The Supreme Court is almost certain to hear the administration’s emergency plea. The Court has instructed the states to file their responses by 4 p.m. on Aug. 3, exactly three months from Election Day 2026. The nation battles not only for who wins the next election but also who determines the rules. It is possible that a SCOTUS decision could overrule the First Circuit’s far-stretched rationalization: The country needs one set of rules to guarantee election integrity and the critical public trust it engenders. Sensible election safeguards seem long overdue.

Share

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

America’s senior citizens also deserve to see a chiropractor of their choosing. MAHA is moving swiftly to ensure that they can, while receiving better overall healthcare support.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe

The alignment between MAHA and the nation’s chiropractic leadership has been building all year. Each step set up the one that followed.

In March, MAHA Action President Tony Lyons presented at The Chiropractic Summit, prompting a four-hour meeting between MAHA and chiropractic leadership in Washington, D.C.

In May, the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) and International Chiropractic Association (ICA) issued a joint statement pledging collaboration to improve patient access to chiropractic care. And in June, the MAHA Chiropractic Hub launched to carry the profession’s long-standing priorities forward.

Several key initiatives are converging to ensure senior citizens get expanded chiropractic care in 2026.

The MAHA Chiropractic Hub, hosted by MAHA Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, was created to host the nation’s chiropractors and connect Americans to a broader array of preventive medical services.

The nation’s two leading chiropractic associations, the ICA and the ACA, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the MAHA Chiropractic Hub aligning policy priorities.

These organizations have at times disagreed, but share a commitment to modernize Medicare coverage for chiropractic services as soon as practical. As Brandon Hoffman, executive director of the MAHA Chiropractic Hub, put it: “For the first time in this fight, the entire profession is pulling in one direction. The agreement locks that alignment in, and now we turn it into committee action.”

Added Hoffman, “This happened because of the leadership of Leigh Merinoff and Deirdre Goldfarb and the enormous effort of the entire MAHA team, who turned a shared goal into a signed agreement and a working plan in a matter of months.”

The focus of the MOU is to unite chiropractors and to advocate for updated Medicare coverage via H.R. 539, and S. 06 in the U.S. Senate, the Chiropractic Medicare Coverage Modernization Act of 2025.

Dr. Joe Betz, ICA President, is optimistic: “The energy behind this effort is unlike anything I have seen in my career. Chiropractors, patients, and the health freedom movement are aligned on modernizing Medicare, and the ICA will keep pressing until seniors have the same freedom to choose their chiropractor that they have with any other doctor.”

Added ACA President, Dr. Kris Anderson: “The ACA built the foundation for this moment: the bipartisan coalition, the relationships, and the case for modernization. With the entire profession now adding its weight, we have never been better positioned to get this done for our patients.”

The organizations are united behind passing the bill and will strengthen it through the formal amendment process with three improvements: defining the covered benefit by each state’s authorized scope of practice, with an express exclusion of drugs, surgery, and obstetrics (which are not routine parts of chiropractic practice and for which the profession is not seeking Medicare coverage); adding Medicare private contracting rights for doctors of chiropractic modeled on the existing physician framework; and including a timely implementation schedule.

These amendments make a good bill better and keep the legislation bipartisan. The immediate goal is for a committee markup this session so the bill can pass in the 119th Congress.

Congress added chiropractic care to Medicare coverage in 1972, but that was limited to the sole service of manipulation of the spine, commonly called an “adjustment.” Other necessary services, including initial assessment and evaluation, are still not covered some five decades later. More than one in three American seniors lives with chronic pain.

For decades, chiropractic services have demonstrably offered less intrusive, meaningful relief for patients. Senior citizens deserve the right to choose preventive chiropractic healthcare, subject to the scope of practice limitations in each state. The states regulate the scope of services chiropractors may legally provide; Medicare is the federal vehicle that provides financial support to patients for some of those services.

Supporting patients in their healthcare decision-making is a foundational goal of the MAHA movement. Millions of patients have found relief over the decades through chiropractic care that often obviates the need for prescription painkillers (risking addiction or overdose) or surgery (threatening medical complications and a long recovery). A 2020 study in the journal Pain Medicine found that patients with spinal pain who received chiropractic care had substantially lower odds of filling an opioid prescription. Prevention is generally less costly than reactive allopathic medicine: it is also often more effective.

America’s senior citizens deserve the option to utilize proven therapies already authorized by the states that address root-causes and do not rely on drugs or surgeries that often fail to relieve suffering. Especially with spinal injuries or strains, surgery should be the last medical recourse: only after milder, less intrusive treatments such as chiropractic care are employed should surgery be contemplated. Many patients will respond positively to lower-risk adjustments, saving the pain, risk, and cost of surgeries.

This is why improved chiropractic care aligns with the policy priorities of the MAHA movement. Prevention is superior to reactive cures. Less intrusive means should be employed before recourse to opioids and scalpels.

To support this initiative, MAHA invites MAHA Report readers to visit MAHA Action’s Legislative Tracker to determine whether their elected representatives support H.R. 539. If not, the website provides a precise message to send along with contact details for each congressperson. Please then follow up with a phone call to the representative’s office by July 15, repeating the petition to cosponsor and support H.R. 539.

As of July 7, 2026, 166 House members cosponsor the bill (96 Republicans and 70 Democrats), along with 15 cosponsors in the Senate.

The nation’s most prominent chiropractic organizations are in agreement that Medicare must be modernized to support improved patient outcomes, and they’re mobilizing behind H.R. 539 to do so. Chiropractors from across the nation will gather in Washington, D.C. from July 19-21 to raise awareness of H.R. 539 and garner legislative and voter support for this law change. What the bill needs now is a committee vote, this session.

America’s senior citizens have been waiting since 1972 for this simple remedy of an outdated system. With the help of the MAHA movement, 2026 can and should be the year Congress finally passes chiropractic Medicare modernization legislation and gives our seniors the care choices they deserve.

Share

(Originally published at The MAHA Report.)

(Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

The very term MAHA, an acronym for “Make America Healthy Again,” sows division in many quarters. But the sentiment should hardly be controversial. Whatever Americans might think of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; Anthony Fauci; or the various partisan battles at HHS, the populist MAHA rebellion is rapidly and dramatically raising public awareness about chronic disease and the central role of processed foods in causing it. Yet there is a huge problem lurking here: how to improve nutrient density in foods without either destroying farm profits or spiking grocery store prices.

Flipping More Than the Food Pyramid

It is all fine and good – even crucially important – that the nation’s “food pyramid” was flipped upside down to favor healthy, whole foods including fats and protein rather than prioritizing an overabundance of (often nutritionally empty) carbohydrates. Remember how federal agencies and the medical community told Americans that butter, eggs, and red meat were all bad for you? Turns out that was a profit-driven boondoggle. But righting that wrong does not right the agricultural ship. MAHA has much work yet to do.

Creating a new graphic design in a bureaucratic cubicle does nothing to procure the healthy foods needed to fulfill those new nutrition recommendations. Consumers are listening to the MAHA message. They are scrutinizing labels, studying test results, avoiding hormones and PFAS, and seeking fresh produce. The stock prices and earnings of processed food manufacturers have been suffering. However, only 1% of US agricultural production is organic. Where will the supply come from to meet this new demand?

This is likely the industrial siren that sings routinely in President Donald Trump’s ear: Federal subsidies must continue to be directed to chemical-dependent industrial mono-crops, or else food prices will spike, and there will be anarchy in the streets. There is a thread of truth in this doomy admonition – the United States has become more dependent on these modern systems than any nation on Earth. Of course, as the MAHA movement is revealing, that’s exactly why we are all sick.

A Fatal Industrial Prescription

The prescription to double down on industrial agricultural production is a failed gambit. Industrial agriculture not only reduces nutrient density and compromises freshness and local economies, but it also destroys vital soils and contaminates waterways. While corporate actors cling tightly to the regulatory and subsidy capture that has enriched them at the expense of human health, the problem worsens. The yawning gap between consumer demand and trustworthy producer supply continues to expand.

Here is presented the hidden challenge lurking within what might be termed the MAHA consumer awakening. How does the nation improve food quality without sparking runaway inflation? How does it provide affordable nutrient-dense food not just to wealthy suburbanites but to urban food deserts and SNAP beneficiaries?

As farmer and food rights activist Joel Salatin explains in his upcoming book, Food Emancipation: Unshackling America’s Sustenance, American consumers have brought this crisis upon ourselves. Our eating and shopping choices have fueled the products that sicken us. They have also destroyed the lion’s share of small family farms. The average American farmer is now about 61 years old, which Salatin explains means that about half of all US farmland will change hands in the next 15-20 years (300 million acres, according to the Organic Trade Association). Meanwhile, consumers are paying more for food every year while farmers are paid less. According to the USDA, farmers today receive about 5.8 cents per retail food dollar, compared with 40 cents in the mid-20th century. This is a recipe for disaster.

Courting Future Farmers

Why would any young person seek a career in farming if it is a guaranteed business failure? And who will buy up America’s farmland? – foreign nations? Bill Gates? Big Ag?

As more Americans deepen their understanding of this unfolding crisis, solutions will emerge alongside the political will (by both parties?) to address it. Many consumers seek organic foods, but regenerative agricultural methods that reduce erosion and chemical applications are being embraced by more conventional farmers facing high input costs. (The closing of the Strait of Hormuz has contributed to sharp inflation in many synthetic fertilizers and other agricultural inputs). The country must shift from chemical dependency to self-reliance and soil-building practices.

A new generation of farmers understands that measuring everything in dollars for short-term profits destroys not only food and soil quality but long-term economic viability. As Mark Ratliff of Farm Transition Services, LLC, explains: “Organic farming isn’t about replacing every synthetic input with a more expensive organic one. It’s about building healthier soils that naturally become more productive over time.” Conventional farmers are learning this truth – they can save money in the short term by applying fewer chemicals and earn higher returns in the long term by improving soil health and further decreasing costly inputs.

But there are entrenched hurdles to farmers erected over decades that have sealed our current dependency on processed foods, and they must be dismantled. The greatest impediment to the small or nouveau farm is regulatory burden. Some argue that this was by design, but that is irrelevant to seeking a way out.

The MAHA Food Production Pyramid

In his upcoming new book, the passionate (and self-styled lunatic) libertarian farmer Salatin identifies this problem and posits solutions, proclaiming that:

“Young, enterprising next-generation farmers desperately need a profitable on-ramp to enter agriculture as a viable vocation. ….Food emancipation allowing blanket food transaction choice between voluntary consenting adults without the government’s permission, would unleash thousands of farm entrepreneurs on our neighborhoods…. Nothing could offer as much opportunity and viable business development as Uberizing our food system. The explosion of more affordable and higher quality food options that would follow a food freedom policy would revolutionize America’s foodscape. It would chip away at the food oligarchy, and maybe even eliminate it. It would give farmers access to lucrative value-added convenience food dollars. And it would give consumers a plethora of food options rather than simply a choice of label colors coming out of one processing plant.”

As Americans become more informed about the sources of their food and how it is processed, this “food emancipation” message will gain traction. It is not merely an outdated nutritional pyramid that needs reversing: it is the entire industrial monolith that has inflicted chronic disease through the license offered by uninformed “consumers.”

As Joel Salatin offers, hopefully, “Misplaced trust in USDA Big Food and Big Ag has allowed our nation to lose its freedoms and food options. The time to claw back food choice is now. The time to take the shackles off our sustenance is now.”

You are what you eat, so stop eating Twinkies and Pringles! Instead, support your local farmstand or neighborhood farmer. Healthier, fresh food is the foundation of good health. It is also a core tenet of MAHA!

Share

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic charity that serves poor elderly citizens both in the United States and around the world, is battling in court to preserve the humble sisters’ rights of conscience against efforts of government coercion. Secular state governments, whose highest moral value appears to be ensuring as many babies are prevented or aborted as possible, seek to compel these feisty nuns to provide birth control (including the week-after pill) as part of their healthcare services. This attack on conscience is unconscionable.

Lawyers, Nuns, and Money

At issue is federal mandates under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to provide contraceptive services through all healthcare plans. No religious exemption was included in the original legislation, prompting the Little Sisters of the Poor to file suit. Their litigation success required the government to accommodate genuine religious convictions, prompting a 2017 rule change that Pennsylvania and New Jersey have challenged as arbitrary and capricious. The two states won a district court injunction in 2025 against allowing the religious exemption. The Little Sisters of the Poor appealed: Arguments were heard in the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on July 7.

Even for those who falsely imagine that Christianity has been the scourge of humanity (it hasn’t – Catholic faith in western societies promulgated hospitals, humane prisons, and universities for the poor), a gritty group of nuns who just want to help impoverished elderly citizens around the world make a pretty sympathetic set of plaintiffs. Ironically, these Lord-loving ladies have a faith-driven resolve that rivals the staunchest feminist.

A defiant Mother Loraine Marie Maguire sums up the order’s position well:

“For nearly 200 years we have welcomed the elderly poor and dying into our homes, and with the population of seniors rapidly growing we cannot allow a government lawsuit to stop us from carrying out our mission. Pennsylvania and New Jersey can keep fighting if they want. All we want is to keep serving.”

Feminists by Long Habit

These are not women who flinch at government intimidation or restrictions of their passionate faith. The order was founded in France in 1839 to serve the needs of the elderly poor. In addition to the accustomed Catholic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience (to the Holy Church, not secular jurists waging war on Christian conscience), the organization’s thousands of nuns vow to embrace and advance hospitality. The US activities of the order began in 1868 and now oversee nearly 30 group homes in the country where the elderly poor are served. Internationally, the group serves some 13,000 elderly poor people in 31 countries.

At first blush, it seems odd that the federal government would be concerned about requiring nuns ministering to the health needs of geriatric patients to include contraceptives in their duties. But the contraceptives aren’t for the old folks – they are for Little Sisters of the Poor staff.

Faced with the Little Sisters’ 2011 challenge to the conscience-infringing shortcomings of the ACA, the Obama administration in 2013 attempted a rule fix that exempted the nuns but required them to include a third-party administrator to provide contraceptive coverage directly to the employees. Unsurprisingly, this was unacceptable to the Little Sisters of the Poor as “facilitating” the termination of a sacred human life, so they promptly sued – and won – yet again.

Obama, Biden, and Trump (Oh My!)

In addition to the Obama administration, both the Biden and Trump administrations agreed that employers like the Little Sisters should receive a religious exemption. The goal is to balance religious freedom with reasonable healthcare, which was accomplished under the first Trump administration in 2017. This was challenged, and it reached the US Supreme Court in 2020, where a 7-2 majority ruled in Poor v. Pennsylvania that the Trump administration correctly exercised its authority to create legal and moral exemptions under the ACA.

But Pennsylvania and New Jersey filed suit to challenge the rule in defiance of the SCOTUS decision. The states alleged (and a federal district court agreed) that the Trump rule violated the Administrative Procedures Act and was “arbitrary and capricious.” The states argue that the rule permits the noble nuns to deprive women of services necessary to prevent unwanted pregnancies, of which half end in publicly subsidized abortions.

This is an interesting argument that might itself be labeled arbitrary and capricious. For one thing, legal counsel for the Little Sisters of the Poor points out that the states have not adduced a single complaint by anyone against the order for its policy, suggesting the states are conjuring specious paper tiger harms to women seeking abortions to justify harming the religious liberty of pious nuns. The states are overtly seeking to elevate an economic argument – monetary burdens of abortions – to justify violations of a fundamental liberty to freedom of faith. This is a constitutional nonstarter.

Materialism vs Faith

If money is the states’ issue, what of the benefits to its citizens of the money expended by the order in caring for the elderly poor? What of the economic expectation of Catholic donors that their contributions will not be used to support a practice their faith deems abhorrent? What about the massive fines that will be inflicted against the work of this charity if they refuse to comply – the current situation under the stay issued by the partisan Pennsylvania federal district court? That money will be drained away from needy elderly for state coffers, further undermining philanthropic support for the order’s holy mission. Penalizing the faithful to enhance government cash flow is a dangerous moral hazard.

For years, the secular US monolith that oppresses Christians while advancing Islam has waved off claims of anti-Christian bias with gaslighting dismissals. Yet the evidence is clear that the far-left, TDS-fueled crusade Americans are witnessing against these nuns marginalizes Catholics and is far out of balance with the clear meaning and purpose of the First Amendment. Pennsylvania and New Jersey are not just abridging the fundamental liberties of a noble group of devoted nuns. They are advancing a state secularist religion in violation of the Establishment Clause. When Obama and Biden agreed with Trump, but the far left is pushing an extremely toxic and blatantly unconstitutional anti-nun lawfare, clearly an important liberty Rubicon has been crossed.

That’s why the Little Sisters of the Poor will win their legal (and spiritual) battle in any US court that understands and upholds the US Constitution. This will likely be seen in the pending Third Circuit opinion in this case, and possibly (if either party appeals) in another trip to SCOTUS for clarification.

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

(Photo by Daniel Dreifuss/picture alliance via Getty Images)

The 2026 midterms are in sharp focus as the Trump administration seeks to shore up voter support within the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) camp that boosted Donald Trump into his 2024 election win. The recent US Supreme Court ruling in Monsanto v. Durnell applied federal law to block state tort suits for illness caused by glyphosate. This may have been a big legal win for the Commander in Chief (the Trump administration supported Monsanto in the case), but it has undermined MAHA confidence that President Trump is committed to the movement’s health goals.

A Political Dance on the Right

This friction is the latest jig in a long dancing courtship between MAHA and MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) since Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. clasped hands with Donald J. Trump on August 23, 2024, and coined the phrase that focused voter attention on chronic disease and the corporate capture of the regulatory agencies that oversee Americans’ food and health. The First MAHA Commission Report denounced glyphosate (the active ingredient in weedkiller Roundup) and alienated Trump’s MAGA core and the nation’s commercial crop farmers. The Second MAHA Commission Report swung in the opposite direction, not mentioning glyphosate negatively. This partially appeased the MAGA crowd but agitated the MAHA base.

The MAHA movement continued to grow after President Trump’s election, but it was quickly disappointed by a presidential executive order calling for the increased domestic production of glyphosate in the interest of national security. Then came an EPA roll-back of planned drinking water regulations governing PFAS. MAHA influencers were understandably flustered.

David Murphy, founder of United We Eat and a former finance director of Kennedy’s presidential campaign, warned: “A lot of MAHA voters are realizing they’ve been snookered, they’ve been had by Republicans that had no intention of protecting their health. It’s just a talking point that they added…. Certain MAHA supporters are not going to turn out, and others are going to actively be voting Democrat.”

What Makes MAHA Tick?

This may be partly accurate, as some voters will retaliate as punishment when they feel betrayed. However, “actively voting Democrat” does not further the MAHA agenda that Democrats have fought tooth and nail to sabotage and discredit. David Murphy’s resentment that the Trump administration supported Monsanto in the Durnell case may be justified, but there is a pattern here which is visibly bipartisan: the Obama administration filed a brief in support of Monsanto in the seminal US Supreme Court case of Monsanto v. Bowman. President Obama also installed Thomas Vilsack (aka “Mr. Monsanto”) as the US Secretary of Agriculture, who was later reinstalled by President Joe Biden.

It is true that President Trump is trying to please both sides in the glyphosate dispute, but finding that middle road is the necessary MAHA pathway to incentivize regenerative practices and reduce the use of chemicals in agriculture without alienating and vilifying the nation’s conventional farmers. The Goldilocks answer lies between the two extremes of the MAHA Commission Reports. It is also seen in the president’s important executive order concerning regenerative agriculture.

Executive Order 14414, “Advancing Regenerative Agriculture and Strengthening American Farm Resilience,” was issued on June 25, 2026, as part of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative. This multi-agency initiative seeks to support regenerative agriculture, study the cumulative effects of chemical exposures, and support research for less toxic pesticide alternatives.

The Long and Middle Road

Though the Trump administration supported business interests and the nation’s economy by siding with Monsanto, this has been balanced by meaningful investments of money and policy toward support for regenerative farming practices. President Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be Health and Human Services Secretary, enabling a dramatic reshaping of the nation’s food pyramid toward healthier, more wholesome priorities. The administration also tried to reduce access to harmful junk foods and sugary drinks through the SNAP program.

Though the MAHA criticisms of President Trump are understandable, this short list of MAHA accomplishments by this president is unprecedented. These are remarkable steps forward in the MAHA mission to improve public demand for healthier foods coupled with industry need for support of regenerative methods.

This does not stop the endless retinue of Trump detractors from leveling their criticisms at the president while avoiding giving credit where credit is due. As The Hill reported, “Some longtime environmental advocates said they were not surprised by the ruling and haven’t seen any evidence the Trump administration has done anything to differentiate it from any other standard Republican-led government.”

No Republican-led government has tried to improve SNAP food quality, revolutionize nutrition guidelines, better study agricultural chemicals, and economically support rural farmers to employ regenerative farming practices, all in its first 18 months. Democrats have not only failed to push these MAHA initiatives, they’ve fought tooth-and-nail against them. That may not woo many MAHA voters come midterms.

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

(Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)

As Americans gather to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary, partisan divisions will fade as patriots both red and blue join in celebrating the blessings of the remarkable feats of the nation. The Founding Fathers had doubts that their new political experiment would last so long, but their dream of a thriving Republic has persisted despite many challenges. Still, partisan strife has increased in the United States in recent decades.

Defining the American Dream

A persistent theme for the founders in crafting this new American Republic was how to protect the rights of the individual, including rights to representation in government, while also shielding the fledgling society from the ugly specter of the “demos,” or pure majoritarian rule. Those who created the structures of the US Republic strove not to “protect democracy” but to “protect We the People from the horrors of democracy.”

This is suggested by Benjamin Franklin’s famous remark about the new government he had helped forge. When asked on September 17, 1787, about what form of government the Constitutional Convention had created, Franklin reportedly said: “A Republic, if you can keep it.” The second part of the sentence implies a necessary stewardship.

The American dream is not about owning a suburban home with a garage and a lawn; it is about the liberty to speak, travel, worship, vote, and act freely. However, those freedoms came at a cost and must be vigilantly guarded against forces that would deny or abridge them if able. And the entire bargain was forged in bitter conflict.

The Art and Challenge of Compromise

Americans have always managed to compromise despite sometimes mercurial internal socio-political conflicts. During the American Revolution, a majority of colonists were initially undecided, and an estimated 20% were British loyalists who swore fealty to the king. These internecine tensions were extremely bitter, tearing families apart and spurring migration. Tens of thousands of loyalists left America following the American Revolution, many to Canada. Poor Richard suffered from these intensely competing worldviews: His son, William Franklin, a governor of New Jersey and Loyalist who supported the British during the war, reportedly rarely or never spoke to his father following the revolution.

This fabric of unity, despite often very divergent views, is part of what has made America great – and diverse in bloodlines, cultures, talents, and ideas. The nation even survived a bloody Civil War that pitted brother against brother and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

America’s 1976 bicentennial celebrations were also clouded by misgivings about the nation’s future and direction. A series of shocking assassinations, including John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Martin Luther King, Jr., had shaken the nation to its foundations in the 1960s. The hippie generation was challenging family mores and experimenting with drugs, creating cultural strain that persists today. Tension over the Vietnam War had ripped families apart and sparked domestic violence. And, of course, the Watergate scandal was a fresh wound on a battered Republic.

Rising Partisan Polarization

Since the 1990s, the political tension in the United States has grown more intensely polarized. Each side blames the other for events and societal problems. Americans see the same events from diametrically opposed views: e.g., Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Karmelo Anthony, January 6th, open borders, the Iran War, and numerous US Supreme Court decisions.

The American dream was never about money. On the contrary, twentieth-century materialism, deteriorating moral cohesion, and reckless public spending are destroying the underlying social contract that held the nation together through past conflicts and crises. The US was founded, profoundly, in Judeo-Christian concepts without which it cannot survive.

British author Os Guinness has attributed the success of the American experiment to what he calls “the Golden Triangle of Freedom.” Professor Guinness maintains that the interdependent relationship between virtue, faith, and liberty forms a self-sustaining cycle in which true freedom requires virtue, which requires faith, which requires freedom to flourish. If any one pillar of this triangle is interrupted, a free Republic begins to decay.

Perhaps Americans cannot keep their Republic, as admonished by Franklin, if they abandon virtue in pursuit of ease, faith in pursuit of hedonistic excess, and freedom in the folly of Marxist destruction. Secular humanism and fake science have become the established religions of the corrupt state. “Christian nationalism” (vaguely defined) is a pejorative slur against those who acknowledge the plain fact that the country was built by mostly Christians on Christian values. Political violence is rising while conventional violent crime declines.

A Future Celebration?

In this socio-political climate, the view toward America’s tricentennial celebration is hazy and distant. Will the dream of the founders continue and the golden triangle rebound?

A Marist poll conducted in April of 2024 found 47% of Americans believed another US civil war was likely in their lifetimes. A November 2025 poll from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights found the number of respondents who believed the nation was on a path to another civil war was at 59%, suggesting the nation’s political strife is steadily increasing.

As the nation struggles with socialist narratives, rampant fraud in federal programs, dubious voting systems, and shady abuses by Deep State agencies, that golden triangle and its direct connection to the dream of a Republic that would endure is ever more evident. The founders were concerned that mob democracy would result in a barbarian demos that would employ violence to get what it could not win by persuasion or common sense. Keying Teslas, burning buildings, applauding murders, demanding reparations and state benefits, and other similar tantrums are the symptoms of a society moving into entropy and decay, not unity and mutual respect.

It is a blessing and perhaps a miracle that the United States of America has endured for 250 years. Americans will commemorate their wonderful republic again in fifty years… if they can keep it.

Share

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

(Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)

The Supreme Court issued its long-awaited, highly controversial decision regarding birthright citizenship on June 30. Trump v. Barbara challenged President Donald Trump’s executive order depriving children of illegal immigrants born on US soil of citizenship. The president’s position was struck down in a decision rooted in just that — soil.

Soil or Blood?

The crux of this longstanding legal battle was deciding on the proper interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The Supremes decided 5-4 in Trump v. Barbara that the key phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” refers to “the power of the United States to govern those within its territory,” affirming the British common law doctrine of jus soli, meaning “the right of the soil.”

In its lengthy majority decision, the Court recounted the history surrounding the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and related legislation, concluding “congressional debates of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment confirm the common law rule.” The majority stated that the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed and ratified in direct response to the Court’s heinous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which held that citizenship was determined by blood, not soil.

The government’s attorneys argued on behalf of the Trump administration that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction of” required something beyond mere physical birth based on domicile. The Trump v. Barbara ruling rejected this argument as requiring “some greater quantum of allegiance,” concluding, “There is scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view.”

A Monumental Dissent

Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed in a lengthy (91-page!) dissent, recounting in great historical detail why the Fourteenth Amendment was specifically understood to exclude sojourners from citizenship. Joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, Thomas declaimed the majority’s account as “not historically accurate,” observing, “The Court says that the Citizenship Clause incorporated the English feudal principle that subjects owed lifetime servitude to the King who owned the soil on which they were born, but Americans – unsurprisingly – rejected this feudal principle.”

In conclusion, Justice Thomas accused the majority of “repurpos[ing] the Fourteenth Amendment to protect its own set of preferred rights that the Reconstruction Congress never contemplated and that cannot find support in its text.” By basing citizenship solely upon the accident of birth, the Court’s decision “devalues that citizenship,” he wrote.

In his separate 39-page dissent, Justice Samuel Alito similarly decried the majority’s position as “a mistake that will seriously affect the country’s future,” warning, “The Court’s interpretation preserves a powerful incentive to enter or remain in this country illegally … Other than Canada, the United States will be the only affluent nation where birth alone is enough to establish citizenship.”

In a brief separate dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch dismissed the majority’s invocation of jus soli to support its interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, writing, “That rule, developed in feudal times, had more to do with being a subject than a citizen.”

The Future of Birthright Citizenship

Whether this decision stands the test of time (Justice Thomas expressed skepticism) remains to be seen, but it is now the law of the land. The decision is already fueling partisan divisions in a midterm season, with immediate consequences. Children born to illegal immigrants will now have US citizenship, and Trump’s executive order is defunct.

The ruling is noteworthy in another way: Trump will abide by the Supreme Court’s decision, exhibiting not the qualities of a king but of a second-term elected representative of a republic. In contrast, President Joe Biden vowed to cancel student loan debt after the Supreme Court ruled his effort to do so unconstitutional, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently proclaimed defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Trump administration can revoke the Temporary Protected Status of Haitians and Syrians.

If Americans wish to override the Supreme Court on the issue of birthright citizenship, they have a challenging pathway ahead. Since he is obviously no king, President Trump finds his hands are now tied in his response to what Justice Alito called “birth tourists” (people who travel to the United States to give birth). Even a majority-conservative Congress cannot sidestep the Fourteenth Amendment, and additional statutory hurdles remain (as Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained in his concurrence). It’s been a long time since America ratified a new amendment to the Constitution, and it is particularly unlikely when the nation has rarely been so politically divided.

Share

Share

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

On June 25, President Trump issued a broad executive order, Advancing Regenerative Agriculture and Strengthening American Farm Resilience, to support that transition.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Tensions between organic farming methods and conventional, often chemical-dependent farming practices create friction between farming communities and consumer groups. Some activists demand clean, organic foods immediately, while others want affordable food and are not concerned about possible chemical residues. The president’s effort to reduce chemical contamination by supporting regenerative practices hit a nerve among the former group, who want the president to do more to eliminate chemical use.

One concern is with the use of the term “regenerative.” Large producers and corporations often co-opt labels such as “organic,” “GMO-free,” and “sustainable” by applying them to products or practices that are not beneficial. This weakens consumer trust, undercutting profitability for organic producers and rewarding bad actors.

However, many regenerative farming advocates applauded Trump’s executive order. Kelly Ryerson, of American Regeneration, stated, “The administration’s new mandate to prioritize resources and attention to regenerative agriculture is a refreshing and much-needed commitment to provide our struggling farmers with a viable offramp from the chemical treadmill that keeps them mired in debt.”

Ryerson continued, “HHS spotlighting the connection between soil health, farming practices, and human health is exactly the work that will expedite relief from our chronic disease epidemic.”

Most organic producers understand that, short of a purist agricultural system in which all farms are organic, large conventional farms must be incentivized to use fewer polluting methods where possible, which means implementing what can only be called “regenerative” practices. U.S. agriculture has been pressured to adopt industrial methodology and rapid consolidation for decades, resulting in a system that depletes soils, water resources, and nutrients.

Such methods include the production of a massive amount of genetically modified corn and soy every year, used in animal feed and fuel production. These crops are not transitioning to organic overnight, and rely on routine applications of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. The June 25 executive order does not aim to convert all U.S. farmland to organic production rapidly, but rather to reduce the amount of chemicals used in existing industrial systems. Following decades of federal subsidies and regulations that pressured farmers to invest in chemical applications, the Trump administration is implementing unprecedented steps to reverse that trend.

The EO also specifically calls for research into the potential adverse health impacts of cumulative chemical residue exposures, the development of less toxic alternative chemical products to replace current agricultural chemicals, and a long-overdue study of the impacts of glyphosate and other chemicals used as pre-harvest desiccants. This information can serve as the foundation for future reductions in chemical applications to Americans’ food and ethanol supplies.

Announcing interagency plans to boost regenerative farming, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained: “The quality of our food begins with the way we grow it, and that’s why America’s farmers are essential partners to this mission. At HHS, … through the Advanced Research Projects for Health, we’re investing in new technologies that can reduce reliance on chemical crop protection tools while improving human health.”

Conventional farmers are learning that new technologies allow them to reduce (but not eliminate) expensive chemical applications while increasing yields using regenerative practices such as reduced tilling, cover cropping, rotational grazing, and intercropping. This is a dynamic shift in crop management that is less harmful to soils and uses fewer chemical inputs.

No, President Trump’s E.O does not convert the U.S. agricultural system to organic production, as many Americans wish the nation would do. Yet a major transition of that degree would send economic shocks throughout farming communities and into grocery store shelves. American farming shifted to chemical dependency over many decades; it will not revert to clean soils and zero chemicals overnight.

Some Americans abhor President Trump so greatly, or fantasize so forcefully that the U.S. farming system will transform overnight, that they fail to acknowledge that no president has ever done anything remotely like issue an executive order marshaling federal funds and agency resources to galvanize action to reduce chemical use and incentivize the nation’s crop farmers to use fewer chemicals in production. This is the most sensible and cost-effective way to begin reversing the folly of routinely dousing American farmland with chemicals whose effects are insufficiently studied and understood.

Improving soil health and reducing chemical exposures fits the MAHA policy agenda. U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins praised America’s farmers, saying, “All the work on dietary guidelines, and better health in foods, and better health in America’s diets, all of the make America healthy again effort is about putting our farmers and ranchers and real food back at the center of what we’re doing here in Washington.”

Yes, the nation has a long way to go to learn how to better steward its soils. But new technologies permit aerial observation to reduce chemical applications and study soil health. Other advances can break down existing chemical pollution, develop less harmful alternatives, and educate farmers in how to apply these emerging technologies. The federal government is paying American farmers to learn and to change practices. These policies simultaneously boost rural farming economies, protect vital water supplies, and reduce soil erosion and chemical pollution.

As an organic farmer (and diner), I want to see America’s farming systems transition to holistic, healthy soil and land stewardship. But to do so, Americans must not view their crop farmers as villains to be vanquished, but as allies and neighbors to be recruited.

In my 2023 book, Small Farm Republic, I advocate for diverting some of the massive crop insurance and other federal subsidies to support regenerative practices. President Trump’s latest executive order takes meaningful steps in that direction – providing much-needed economic relief to farmers while incentivizing agricultural practices that help move the nation toward a cleaner environment and food supply.

(Originally published at The MAHA Report.)

(Photo by: Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), joined by four states, has sued the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), a nonprofit association of clinicians that develops clinical guidelines for transgender and gender-diverse care, alleging the organization deceived parents and children for profit-driven motives. Critics claim the suit is a Trump administration attack on the transgender community and an infringement of WPATH’s First Amendment liberties. America’s children are caught in the middle of a scientific and cultural tug-of-war.

The Complaint and Background

Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas have united with the FTC to allege in their complaint that “WPATH knows that its recommendations are not supported by scientific evidence or a medical consensus” and that “[t]ransition doctors founded WPATH to promote the transition service industry’s financial interests after losing academic support and insurance coverage for medical transition services.” The plaintiffs allege this profit-driven shield of questionable science was coupled with inadequate warnings about potential risks from medical and surgical interventions, violating parents’ rights.

WPATH was formed in 1979 to study human gender psychology and what would come to be known as “gender-affirming care.” The group became perhaps the most influential international body concerning the “science” of gender care, though it has itself “transitioned” in its trans prescriptions. Early on, WPATH recognized gender dysphoria as a mental illness, mandated strict oversight of transition by psychologists and psychiatrists, set age minimums for treatment, and required a “real-life test,” which required patients to socially transition for up to a year before receiving hormone therapy. These standards were expressed in a series of WPATH documents known as “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People” (SOC).

WPATH’s SOCs evolved into positions that allegedly catered to socio-political pressures from the trans community rather than rigorous scientific study. About 2010, WPATH began to publicly advocate for the depathologization (the process of removing a condition or behavior from the classification of a mental or physical disease or disorder) of transgenderism. In 2022, it eliminated any mention of age limitations for breast amputation or penis removal. In announcing the complaint, the FTC stated that “WPATH did not base this decision on medical evidence” and that it also “failed to disclose side effects of certain pediatric medical transition services.”

Transgender Wars Unfold

The FTC began investigating WPATH’s conduct during Trump 2.0, prompting the entity to file suit in February 2026 to block the FTC’s investigation, claiming the agency’s motives were not consumer protection but intimidation and speech chilling. Of course, this begs the obvious question: Are the complaint’s allegations of insufficient medical consensus to justify recommending drugs and surgeries to minors meritorious? If so, the public needs protection from an evident fraud; if not, the government’s suit will fail.

Yet the presiding judge, James Boasberg, granted WPATH’s request for a preliminary injunction against the FTC, ruling that the allegations against the organization were likely motivated by animus toward gender-affirming care. Thus continues the-cart-versus-the-horse merry-go-round of politics vying with “real science.”

The new Texas lawsuit bypasses the Boasberg blockade to bring the evidence to trial. WPATH was used as the global template for a rapid and radical transition of so-called scientific consensus for controversial (and profitable) therapies, drugs, and surgeries. Other institutions relied on its positions and began stepping back as the Trump administration honed in on trans conditioning for young children. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) announced in early February 2025 that it opposed transgender surgeries until age 19. Likely, it saw the litigious writing on the trans-ideology walls.

Deciding for the Children

The court’s fact-finders will assess whether WPATH can back up its claims of scientific justification for its recommendations to the world’s children and parents. The government will likely introduce its own experts, including the influential and comprehensive UK Cass Review released in April 2024, which resulted in a reversal of the UK and other nations’ gender medicine policies for minors. The Cass Review specifically criticized WPATH’s leap in SOC 8 to the elimination of age limits, stating:

“12.29 WPATH 8 justifies this change in stance on the basis that there is more evidence on improved mental health outcomes with social transition, that fluidity of identity is an insufficient justification not to socially transition, and that not allowing a child to socially transition may be harmful.

“12.30 However, none of the WPATH 8 statements in favour of social transition in childhood are supported by the findings of the University of York’s systematic review.”

WPATH and the transgender community protest that the Trump administration is simply “marginalizing” trans people and putting young children at risk by denying them the (often lacking parental oversight) liberty to pick from a rainbow of genders and follow through with drug and scalpel. The FTC, in turn, argues that parents and children have been duped for profit by a putative professional organization that serves as a deceptive, pseudo-scientific front. Paragraph Ten of the complaint asserts a very serious allegation: “WPATH HAS PROVIDED TO CLINICIANS THE MEANS BY WHICH THEY DECEIVE CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS INTO PURCHASING PEDIATRIC MEDICAL TRANSITION SERVICES.”

Those are fightin’ words, in any gender. This case promises to become very influential on the future law – and medical care – surrounding transgenderism.

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The US Supreme Court declined to grant a controversial Petition for Writ of Certiorari filed by the US government, prompting a strident dissent on June 22 by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. The petition asked the Court to review a decision by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which had overturned the criminal convictions of a black defendant. The appeals court based its decision in part on the defendant’s unique racial perspective during a police investigation. In their dissent, Alito and Thomas argued that this reasoning was unconstitutional because it relied on race.

A DC Firearms Sweep

Donte Carter was gathered with a group of friends in Washington, DC, when four officers approached them as part of a firearm interdiction operation. An officer requested that he “hike up” his pants to see if he was concealing a weapon, revealing a bulge that proved to be a stolen (from police) handgun. Carter filed in court to suppress the weapon as the product of an illegal seizure in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. His motion was denied.

The crux of the legal issue centered on the moment when the officer asked him to raise his pants. Carter and his lawyers argued that when the police told him to hike up his pants, they had “seized” him or his property without probable cause, and thus anything obtained thereby is inadmissible. The government argued that the police did not seize the defendant until after he lifted his pants and revealed the hidden weapon, at which point the officers possessed reasonable suspicion.

In the United States District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Carter received a sympathetic audience. That court recited research suggesting black Americans are more likely to comply with police commands than white people. What created controversy in the Supreme Court (resulting in a rather sharp dissent) was that the appellate court infused its analysis with controversial racial justifications that were arguably themselves racist. Justice Alito did not mince words in his dissent:

“After concluding that the officers’ conduct did not enable the court to ‘objectively determine’ whether Carter was seized, the court—relying on its precedent—said that it ‘must look’ to a further fact: the ‘defendant’s race.’ … The proper inquiry, the court stated, was ‘whether an objective and reasonable person sharing the defendant’s generalized lived experiences arising out of their racial status’—that is, ‘sharing Mr. Carter’s racial status as a Black man’—‘would have felt free to terminate the police encounter.’”

Surmising Supreme Court Reasoning

Alito wrote that he “would grant the petition” for review and complained that failure to correct the lower court’s analysis would require dangerous and unconstitutional race-based assessments. The dissent warned, “Under the test, officers will need to quickly assess a person’s race, and if officers and courts must craft special rules for black persons, what about dark-skinned Latinos, other Latinos, and members of other minority groups?”

However, studying the lower court decisions and the underlying facts of the case, it is easy to see why the majority of the Supreme Court did not vote to grant the petition, especially when reconsidering the pivotal moment when Carter pulled up his pants and revealed an illegal handgun

The police could not see that Donte Carter had a gun when they first walked up to the group. The officers were responding to recent shootings in the area, but they were on a wild (armed) goose chase, with no specific information about Carter or the gun he carried. Without the “search” of his person by having him hike up his pants, the weapon would not have been discovered. The police cannot search and then use the results thereof as probable cause – it works the other way around.

Moreover, this issue of timing has nothing to do with race. If the suspect were black, white, or iridescent, the question of the legality of the search and thus the legitimacy of the conviction would depend on the rights of people to resist illegal requests. The police do not have the authority to walk around on American streets and randomly search people for weapons – legal or illegal.

Many justices might view the Court of Appeals’ decision as the right result for the wrong reason. (Certain justices of the more progressive persuasion might hold that it was the right result for the right reason). The decision is narrow, is not binding on other federal circuits, and its rationale can still be challenged in the highest court at a future juncture. In declining to hear the case, the Supreme Court has not forsaken a golden calf of Equal Protection, as the dissent suggests; it is merely upholding the Fourth Amendment following an illegal search and seizure.

Share

Share

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

(Photo by Mehmet Eser/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The Supreme Court is expected to issue several decisions on Monday, none of which is more controversial than its determination of whether the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution authorizes birthright citizenship. Americans are passionately divided over this issue, ensuring the court’s legal analysis will fuel partisan outrage (and opposing joy), whichever way the court rules.

Defining US Citizenship

On his first day in office, January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” EO 14160 sought to deny US citizenship to children born on US soil to non-citizens. Multiple lawsuits were promptly filed to block the president, one of which, Trump v Barbara, was accepted for consideration by the US Supreme Court.

Click Here to Subscribe!

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868 to secure citizenship for former slaves, states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The legal analysis required of the US Supreme Court is to decide whether “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is operative and imposes a requirement in addition to being “born or naturalized in the United States.”

Supporters of open borders and lax immigration policy argue that the United States has long used the Fourteenth Amendment to automatically confer citizenship on children of illegal immigrants and traveling visitors. Many of President Trump’s detractors assert racist motives and claim the very effort to block birthright citizenship is authoritarian and offensive.

Gray Laws and Political Polarization

However, the law is not as cut-and-dry as many leftist legal pundits allege. The seminal case on the issue is United States v. Wong Kim Ark, decided in 1898, which acknowledged the plaintiff’s claim to US citizenship based on his birth in San Francisco to Chinese citizens. Yet the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment and subsequent acts of Congress suggest something more than mere birth was required by the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

In its amicus curiae brief in Trump v Barbara, the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence addresses the historical context of the Fourteenth Amendment, including the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which granted citizenship to “all noncitizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States.” The 1924 Act would have been unnecessary if Congress had understood the Fourteenth Amendment to create birthright citizenship.

The amicus curiae brief also points to the specific representations of the legislative members who advanced the Fourteenth Amendment:

“Representative John Bingham, a key figure in drafting the Fourteenth Amendment, was even more direct, stating that “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is ... a natural-born citizen.” … Thus, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 demonstrates the contemporaneous congressional understanding that citizenship required more than birth; it required an allegiance inconsistent with being subject, through one’s parents, to a foreign power.”

Birthright Battle Apex

There are good-faith legal arguments to be made by lawyers on both heated sides of this socio-cultural hot-button issue, which explains the intensity of feelings among opposing political factions on illegal immigration. America was not experiencing mass illegal immigration in 1898. It is estimated that more than 250,000 children are born in the US annually to mothers in the country illegally or on temporary status. An interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that narrows it to merely territorial citizenship (rendering “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” meaningless) creates a moral hazard in which mothers hoping for a better future for their children will consider desperate means to enter the US illegally to deliver their child here.

Supporters of a broad interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment point to the loss of SNAP, CHIP, Medicaid, and other benefits for hundreds of thousands of children a year. Opponents point to the same list and ask why legal citizens should pick up this ever-growing tab.

This contentious political conflict has now been funneled into the nation’s highest court, which just last week ruled that the Trump administration has the authority to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians. Trump v Barbara addresses a completely different legal issue, but impacts an overlapping demographic: many of the temporary Haitian and Syrian refugees affected by the TPS ruling may have given birth to children who could now be denied citizenship.

It is easy to see why temperatures run high on both sides of the political divide over birthright citizenship. The US Supreme Court could kick the can down the road and delay a ruling in Trump v Barbara until after the midterms. Whenever this decision is issued, the court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment and its impact on the birthright battle will be both legally and politically seismic.

[Note: the Court ruled against the administration, as discussed in an upcoming commentary.}

Share

(Originally published at Liberty Nation News.)

Welcome to the Revolution is an invitation to peek behind the scenes of the last months of the 2024 election and the first year of Robert F. Kennedy’s tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services. This story surveys the political and cultural forces that compelled RFK, Jr. to run as a Democrat and Independent before joining forces with President Donald Trump, likely pushing the Republican ticket over the finish line to electoral success.

But that is just the beginning of an ongoing revolutionary shift in America, not just in politics but in the state and federal institutions so desperately in need of reform. Kennedy’s experiences at HHS continue to prove everything he proclaimed while campaigning for the presidency: regulatory capture, dishonesty about disease and treatments, and a co-opted legacy media that attacks him and the administration for championing reform.

The book also argues that Americans need not surrender their personal views to support MAHA initiatives. We don’t have to agree on vaccine safety and efficacy, or the origins of COVID-19 (very obviously a lab in Wuhan — just sayin’), in order to agree that we wish to support our farmers, reduce corporate domination of food production, and improve food quality for all Americans. We can set aside disputes about gender identity, immigration policy, or who to hate in the Gaza dispute, and rescue our farmers and food supply while there is still hope and growing awareness.

If we cannot overcome our political rancor to secure these basic necessities, we will suffer far worse consequences than open borders and trans men in women’s sports: we will face continuing chronic illness and control of our food and health by foreign nations and multinational corporations. We will battle escalating food inflation and perhaps famine in America (the subject of my other recent book, The Coming Food Crisis).

The mission to nurture US farms and soils and improve America’s food supply remains a uniting theme undergirding the MAHA movement. Most real change is not happening at the federal level, but in state and local communities, and in the buying decisions Americans are making at the grocery stores and when dining out. This is the core of the movement’s continued growth, which promises to endure beyond future elections.

MAHA may have been birthed in a Kennedy-Trump alliance, but it is not the intellectual property of any one person or party. It is the core of an American awakening to the toxins in our food, the unsustainability of current farming systems, and the resulting illness they have sown in our nation’s children, military personnel, and everyone who eats in conventional US grocery stores or fast-food restaurants. Changing these eating habits and bending markets and producers to improve their practices and offerings — THAT is the core of an enduring bipartisan transformation of the nation!

The MAHA movement is our growing voice. Mothers across the nation are joining together and standing up. Our school, hospital, and military meals are highly processed and largely devoid of nutrients.

Please order my new book today, and join me on my journey into this transformative movement. The federal agencies and corporations that control our food supplies will not listen to voters (diners!) who do not speak.

I am deeply grateful to my readers for their support of my work. I write to inform people and stimulate genuine bipartisan discourse. The readership and encouraging feedback I receive are the fuel in my tank. Thank you all!

Order the Book!

Welcome to the Revolution!

That patriotism sparked a post from President Trump, who wrote about the book on his Truth Social Platform: “As we celebrate our Nation’s 250th Birthday, Eric [Metaxas] honors the Faith, Wisdom, and Courage of the Great Patriots who sacrificed so much to secure our Independence. These stories of our shared past inspire us to build a future bigger, greater, and stronger than ever before. THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Skyhorse Publishing President Tony Lyons recently appeared on Steve Bannon’s podcast, “War Room” (which streams on Rumble), praising the Metaxas book as “epic” but also reporting that the book is being suppressed and censored.

“What we know is that it hit No. 2 on The New York Times Bestseller list,” Lyons said. “It should have hit No. 1. It was No. 1 on Amazon for the week it launched, and Jill Biden’s book, which sold far fewer copies and was No. 5 on Amazon, hit No. 1 on the Times list.”

Lyons also told Bannon that Metaxas’ book had the highest sales, despite political action committees buying copies of Jill Biden’s book to inflate numbers. Not only was Revolution No. 1 on Amazon for the week of June 7, Lyons said, but it was also No. 1 on Bookscan – which tracks sales in bookstores nationwide – and, for the week of June 11, #1 on Publisher’s Weekly and #1 on The Baltimore Sun.

Lyons said, “Two weeks after publication of both books, Revolution is #175 on Amazon, while Biden’s book has shriveled to #897. Books with organic sales, consumer sales, tend to have staying power.”

Yet despite moves to diminish the book’s reach and relevance, Revolution has struck a chord among readers – and well it should.

The immediate value of Revolution is in its exquisite nonfiction storytelling. The story begins before the war, in what Metaxas calls “the revolution before the revolution,” and recounts the historical and cultural context of the two nations as tensions escalate into open war. The gritty details of the war are surveyed, not so much as a military treatise but as a study of human character and the values that shaped the revolution.

The magnitude of this brilliant and beautifully written book is beyond the capacity of a review to capture, but it includes a recounting of the pivotal episodes in American history; and tracing the leaders and groups who emerged to lead the rebellion and subsequent war. Metaxas relies heavily on primary sources and creates vivid scenes, with help from 16 pages of art reproductions, bringing these dusty stories to a fresh, modern understanding. The reader learns about the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, the Boston Massacre and subsequent legal proceedings, including the Boston Tea Party, the battle of Bunker (Breed’s) Hill, and Paul Revere’s ride. Also peppered throughout the book are details of the gruesome realities of war and how the nation’s founders suffered.

Throughout this gripping true-life tale, Metaxas incorporates quotations from the actual participants, conveying a deeper understanding of an ordeal we moderns often take for granted. Readers will read speeches by George Washington for the first time, and trace the emergence of patriotic luminaries like John and Sam Adams, Nathan Hale, Thomas Jefferson, and, of course, George Washington. These larger-than-life patriots are brought down to real life, and their motives and backgrounds are related in a way that personalizes them and reveals their humility and courage.

Metaxas himself was awed by what he learned in his research about these heroes, noting in a recent email to The MAHA Report: “When I set out to write this profound story, it was the discovery of the character of the men involved in the Revolution that STUNNED me.”

Readers may be stunned, too.

In the book, Metaxas tells the story of the young Nathan Hale, who famously said, just before he was hanged for spying on the British for the patriot cause: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

Metaxas offers readers a biography tracing Hale’s education, faith, and tremendous accomplishments. By the age of 20, Hale had been promoted to captain in Connecticut’s Seventh Regiment, where he quickly distinguished himself by his piety, intellect, and bravery. Revolution relates a gripping story of Hale trying to steal a British supply ship moored off the coast.

“When the men in the sloop went to sleep, Hale’s plan was to sneak onto the ship, unmoor it, and then guide it quietly to the American side,” Metaxas writes. “When the man guarding the sloop at last said ‘All’s well!’ and went below, Hale knew it was time, soon after creeping aboard the vessel, and successfully guiding her to the wharf. It was a heroic effort, widely celebrated by the Americans.”

Hale agreed to join an elite espionage group called Knowlton’s Rangers, where he was the only member willing to slip into British-controlled territory to gather reconnaissance for General Washington. Most Americans know how the story ends, with Hale captured and hanged. But Metaxas adds depth and context perhaps available nowhere else: the names and characters of the British officers, descriptions of what Hale said and wore, and the route he traveled.

Metaxas extols the intelligence, discipline, and faith of the American founders, qualities that infused their against-all-odds determination to risk everything for the liberties the nation celebrates still in 2026. His critique of the British gentry and their hedonistic excesses incorporates tales not generally recounted in elementary school textbooks, such as the rape and murder of civilians by British regulars, and the torture and starvation of prisoners.

Metaxas focuses the reader’s attention on virtue and character, noting that “all the Founders believed for virtue to thrive, we must be a culture of robust religious faith,” and that the men leading the Revolution on the American side believed that they were engaged in something that was both divinely inspired and divinely directed. This dauntless assertion is a direct shot across the secular bow of modern efforts to portray all of the founders as deists and dismiss the central role of the Christian faith in the American Revolution. Metaxas is volleying in the nation’s ongoing American history wars, and he knows it.

He writes in the epilogue: “It seems impossible that we might sustain the liberty bequeathed to us by the men of the Revolutionary era without a culture as dedicated to faith and virtue as theirs.”

Metaxas is a gracious writer who tells our country’s story in a bipartisan, engaging way. He is not cudgeling readers; he is beguiling them with the art of the master storyteller.

This is a time, and a book, that should bring Americans together in gratitude for our heritage. It is, above all, a celebration of what unites us.

[Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World, by Eric Metaxas, was published on June 2, 2026 by Skyhorse Publishing. It is available in bookstores nationwide and on Amazon in hardcover, for Kindle and as an audiobook.]

Share

(Originally published at The MAHA Report.)

Welcome to the Revolution is an invitation to peek behind the scenes of the last months of the 2024 election and the first year of Robert F. Kennedy’s tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services. This story surveys the political and cultural forces that compelled RFK, Jr. to run as a Democrat and Independent before joining forces with President Donald Trump, likely pushing the Republican ticket over the finish line to electoral success.

But that is just the beginning of an ongoing revolutionary shift in America, not just in politics but in the state and federal institutions so desperately in need of reform. Kennedy’s experiences at HHS continue to prove everything he proclaimed while campaigning for the presidency: regulatory capture, dishonesty about disease and treatments, and a co-opted legacy media that attacks him and the administration for championing reform.

The book also argues that Americans need not surrender their personal views to support MAHA initiatives. We don’t have to agree on vaccine safety and efficacy, or the origins of COVID-19 (very obviously a lab in Wuhan — just sayin’), in order to agree that we wish to support our farmers, reduce corporate domination of food production, and improve food quality for all Americans. We can set aside disputes about gender identity, immigration policy, or who to hate in the Gaza dispute, and rescue our farmers and food supply while there is still hope and growing awareness.

If we cannot overcome our political rancor to secure these basic necessities, we will suffer far worse consequences than open borders and trans men in women’s sports: we will face continuing chronic illness and control of our food and health by foreign nations and multinational corporations. We will battle escalating food inflation and perhaps famine in America (the subject of my other recent book, The Coming Food Crisis).

The mission to nurture US farms and soils and improve America’s food supply remains a uniting theme undergirding the MAHA movement. Most real change is not happening at the federal level, but in state and local communities, and in the buying decisions Americans are making at the grocery stores and when dining out. This is the core of the movement’s continued growth, which promises to endure beyond future elections.

MAHA may have been birthed in a Kennedy-Trump alliance, but it is not the intellectual property of any one person or party. It is the core of an American awakening to the toxins in our food, the unsustainability of current farming systems, and the resulting illness they have sown in our nation’s children, military personnel, and everyone who eats in conventional US grocery stores or fast-food restaurants. Changing these eating habits and bending markets and producers to improve their practices and offerings — THAT is the core of an enduring bipartisan transformation of the nation!

The MAHA movement is our growing voice. Mothers across the nation are joining together and standing up. Our school, hospital, and military meals are highly processed and largely devoid of nutrients.

Please order my new book today, and join me on my journey into this transformative movement. The federal agencies and corporations that control our food supplies will not listen to voters (diners!) who do not speak.

I am deeply grateful to my readers for their support of my work. I write to inform people and stimulate genuine bipartisan discourse. The readership and encouraging feedback I receive are the fuel in my tank. Thank you all!

Order the Book!

Welcome to the Revolution!